Del Close: 75 years

[Hendo]

An "a-ha" note from Del? We had a show where we had a character of a young boy (played by Ed O'Rourke) who loved to bow-hunt with his dad (played by me). When he finds out he has cancer and won't recover, he asks his dad to take him out and hunt him. He asks his dad to let him die the way he wants to. He wants to die on his feet. The last scene in the show was the father and mother at wedding reception for two other characters in the show. While they're watching the wedding dance, the mother turns to the father and says, "I miss Tommy." And the father responds, "Me too. Lord, he was fast." And then lights.

When the lights came back up, four women in the back row were sobbing. We found out they were all nurses on a cancer ward. Del was ecstatic. He came into the green-room and said it was one of the best things he'd ever seen. "Sure you had 'em laughing... but then you made the CRY. THAT'S the true test. Any asshole can make people laugh. You have to really try to make them cry."

And then I realized that being funny should never be the end result. Tell the story. Play the character with integrity. Bits are for losers.

[joek18]

Originally Posted by Hendo

this last Wednesday was the 10th anniversary of his passing, and I actually spent a fair amount of time reflecting on those last couple of months and that last party the night before he died.

I think part of Del would be really happy to see long-form improv doing so well... kind of a final "fuck you" to Bernie Sahlins, who pretty much never gave long-form (or Del) the due it deserved.

With respect, Bernie Sahlins is one of the primary reasons Del Close not only became who he was but also became anything at all. While they certainly had their disagreements - valid on both sides - there were YEARS when Del's sole means of support were the shows that Bernie offered him. During at least one show at SC, Bernie himself would drive to pick up Del from the rehab center and then drop him off at end of the evening.

Before Charna worked the considerable miracle of cleaning up Del, he was a drug abuser of epic proportions. This is not to denigrate Del's abilities but there were months during the drug decades when he wasn't there at all.

I also might point out that Bernie's central contention was that improv should not be used as a commercial enterprise but rather as a means to an end. As much as people enjoy ripping him, it was Bernie's steadfast rule that improv sets be free of charge - both to encourage an audience to view the work in progress and also to demand that improvisers take sufficient risks to fail.

To this day, IO charges for improv sets while Second City doesn't. That's not such a bad legacy for Bernie. As to "credit", I don't think either Bernie or Del believed either owed the other one damn thing - other than a grudging respect for the warhorses they both were.

It's also worth noting that at Del's going away party, Bernie admitted, in front of the entire group, that "Del was right... for tonight." While it was humorous, it also meant a lot to Del.

Again with respect, it's noble to laud Del for the work he inspired but it's not necessary to rip Bernie to do it.

[JRC]

iO (and the Playground, Annoyance, et al.) doesn't charge for "improv sets," they sell tickets to a fully improvised show. The improvisation IS the show.

That being said, yes and, you can honor one without denigrating the other.

[joek18]

Originally Posted by JRC

iO (and the Playground, Annoyance, et al.) doesn't charge for "improv sets," they sell tickets to a fully improvised show. The improvisation IS the show.

Point taken. My apology if I phrased the notion poorly.

[Rich]

Originally Posted by kremidas

I would be interested to hear a note or some form of feedback you got from Del that you would consider a "breakthrough" note..

I was at a point in my improv where I was having trouble understanding what people were asking of me when they told me to "get out of my head". This was not the fault of previous teachers, it's just where I was on my journey. I can't remember what the scene I did was, but afterward Del railed on my choices and after I defensively explained about trying not to be in my head, he demanded names and threatened colorful violence on whatever moron teachers had taught me that not being in my head meant not using my brain. That knocked down a wall for me. Remnants of it remain, but he did it major damage.

While on the subject of great notes, seeing Joe Keefe post here reminds me of this great thing he said once. I'm probably paraphrasing badly, but he said that in improvisation we should aspire to literature. I don't know that it shows in my work, but I found that very inspiring

[joek18]

Originally Posted by Rich

While on the subject of great notes, seeing Joe Keefe post here reminds me of this great thing he said once. I'm probably paraphrasing badly, but he said that in improvisation we should aspire to literature. I don't know that it shows in my work, but I found that very inspiring

How kind of you to remember.

And yes, I hold it to be true: great improvisation should take the same care as great literature. Dismay, to me, is the use of words onstage to fill the air with sound - rather than convey useful meaning, demanding characters affect each other, exploration of goals, time and space.

Further: I'm a pompous jackass but that doesn't mean I'm not right.

[jimfath]

Originally Posted by Chip

What made Del a good teacher? Was he great at spotting whatever you individually needed to work on? Was he a good teacher for everyone? I guess I'm asking you to fill in the blank: You should have taken classes with Del because...

A friend of mine at the Noble Fool took a class with Del many many years ago. I remember asking him about it in great detail when I first moved to Chicago.

He told me, and feel free to call bullshit as I have no way to verify this, that Del seemed odd, bothered, and under the influence for pretty much every class. BUT, at the same time, he was unflappable, and utterly sharp. "You could never trip him up" I remember him saying. "It was uncanny."

The thing that got me was in the way that he described Del and his reaction to him. It was as if he completely underestimated him. It sounds like a lot of people did.

Again, you can call BS as this is 3rd hand information. I moved here 5 years after he died. I feel like talking about him might help those of us that never met him know what he was all about.

[JRC]

Del taught his class in a casual manner. The cheapo digital clock that's in the DCT light booth now used to be in the lightbooth window in the cabaret. My notes from Del's Class kept good record of what happened when... I began to notice that Del's "opening" to the class, a rambling, seemingly inconsequential story from his life or that day, would take almost exactly 30 minutes. The time that other teachers would/do take up with attendance and/or warmups he spent with a story.

He would wrap up a story on, say, his experience with writing comic books and comics in general, with an idea for us to improvise as if all the characters have secret identities... or scenes where the rules of physics don't apply.
Once, after talking about his appreciation of a scene in the Animaniacs Christmas special where Wakko becomes Ringo (the character actually becoming the archetype he was based on) we did scenes where we only played archetypes.

To me, I loved the stories. I know people who were in class with me, the exact same classes, and hated the class.

Del had experienced so much in general, much less with improvisation. He continued to experiment with it and share his ideas and enthusiasm. He was curious and that curiosity made us, as his students and lab materials, all the more excited.

It's March 9th.
Happy Birthday, Del.

[Fenstermaker]

Originally Posted by JRC

It's March 9th.
Happy Birthday, Del.

Yes, Happy Birthday, Del!
I'm sorry I didn't know you.

Thank you to everyone for sharing stories.

[dmaher]

Rich hinted at this, but I'm curious if "being in your head" was such a big issue/talking point for people when Del was alive? If so, how did Del address/propose to "solve" it?